Exiles: The exiles are the voices in your head that hate themselves. The ones who believe that they are failures, that nobody loves them, that they will never accomplish anything. They are the insecure inner children within you that need to be coaxed and satisfied with gentleness and kindness.

Managers: The managers are the parents in your head. The naggers, the pushers, the doers. These are the voices that never feel that you have done enough, and that drive you to live up to higher standards and push yourself to greater heights.

Firefighters: Firefighters and Managers want the same things—accomplishing goals and becoming a better person—but they get to these goals with different means. Firefighters are emotional and immediate, and do everything they can to solve problems immediately. They have the best intentions in mind, but they don’t make the best decisions.

Ending your bad habits means getting all three of these voices to agree with each other, work together, and calm down.

Your Exiles must feel secure, your Managers must be convinced that you are on the right track, and your Firefighters must remain calm.

So how do you do this?

1) Calm Down

Sit, breathe, and relax. Chill out and accept your mind for what it is.

Recapture your “you”, and make sure you are in the driver’s seat.

By calming down in any situation, this takes the Managers and the Firefighters off the wheel.

When you want to handle your bad habit, imagine that you have your Manager helping you to deal with it. Ask yourself these questions:

Are you being pushed too hard?

Are you procrastinating too much?

Are you being nagged too death?

Are you not trusting others?

Find the answer to these questions, and imagine them as a whole person that you can argue with and dismiss.

2) Talk To Your Voices

This may sound weird, but it’s necessary: talk to the other voices inside of yourself.

Because you need to kill your ego if you want to kill your bad habits.

Your habits are attached to your ego, and by reducing your ego and turning your self into just one of many, it is easier to diminish the importance of your bad habits and see them as deadweight you don’t need in your life.

When you talk to these voices, ask them certain questions, like:

How do you contribute to my growth?

What do you do to protect me?

What would you be if you weren’t protecting me?

These are tough questions that will take a lot of reflection to truly find the answers. But once you do, you will see yourself in a way you have never seen yourself before.

3) Confront the Exile

And finally, you must confront the Exile.

You will ask your questions to the Managers and the Firefighters, but the Exiles will be waiting in the corner, searching for your approval.

It’s your job to grant it that approval, and that means coming to terms with your weaknesses, flaws, and insecurities.

Approach your Exile and tell them that you accept them for whom they are, because you are secure enough to know that you will work towards fixing your flaws.

Be gentle to yourself, and to your Exiles. Don’t let your Exiles get worked up and worried, only to have your Firefighters ruin the entire situation.

And finally—don’t convince yourself these techniques are too ridiculous to work.

Embrace the other voices in your head, and find peace with them instead of running from them.

It’s about understanding yourself, and getting to a point where you know that you no longer need those bad habits.

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In 2018, the third year of Hack Spirit, I poured thousands of hours and considerable resources into creating these articles. It's a labor of love and remains free thanks to your patronage. If you found any value in these articles, please consider supporting what I do with a donation. Your support is what helps me to continue creating more Hack Spirit articles. To make a donation, select the amount and click the "donate" button below.

I’m Lachlan Brown, the founder and editor of Hack Spirit. I love writing practical articles that help others live a more mindful and better life. I have a graduate degree in Psychology and I’ve spent the last 6 years reading and studying all I can about human psychology and practical ways to hack our mindsets. If you to want to get in touch with me, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook.